Range instability leads to cytonuclear discordance in a morphologically cryptic ground squirrel species complex.

ABSTRACT: The processes responsible for cytonuclear discordance frequently remain unclear. Here, we employed an exon capture data set and demographic methods to test hypotheses generated by species distribution models to examine how contrasting histories of range stability vs. fluctuation have caused cytonuclear concordance and discordance in ground squirrel lineages from the Otospermophilus beecheyi species complex. Previous studies in O. beecheyi revealed three morphologically cryptic and highly divergent mitochondrial DNA lineages (named the Northern, Central and Southern lineages based on geography) with only the Northern lineage exhibiting concordant divergence for nuclear genes. Here, we showed that these mtDNA lineages likely formed in allopatry during the Pleistocene, but responded different

SUBMITTER: Phuong MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5614845 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature